Sailing the Seas on the Tall Ships

By Delle Jacobs

         

I’d be hard-pressed to name my favorite tall ship. I haven't been on all of them yet. But I’m working hard to change that.

 

The first time I went to sea on a ship, it was the Lady Washington in 1999. My purpose was research. I needed information that would get my hero from England to Portugal and back. Instead, I found a lifetime love.

 

The Lady is a brig (two-masted, square sails) built as a nearly authentic replica of the original Lady Washington of the 18^th century. No one is entirely sure what the original looked like, and certain safety measures and engine power are modern necessities, but modern ways intrude very little. We sailed from Astoria, Oregon, beneath the bridge at the Columbia River mouth and returned, a three-hour trip on what Captain "Evil Ryan" Meyers called a “light air day”. That was because the wind was so still we could have moved faster by blowing on the sails ourselves. Four knots was the best we could do under sail power, and at that speed, I could hardly tell we were moving. But I was hooked. There’s something about moving so silently, so smoothly that’s inescapably addicting. (Take note, I haven’t yet been under sail in a true storm.)

 

In 2005, the Privateer Lynx came to Portland with the Lady Washington. A

 topsail schooner and revised replica of the original Lynx, she is fore-and-aft

 rigged, meaning the sails line up with the long axis of the boat and are more or less triangular. A topsail schooner also carries at least one square-rigged sail (running cross-wise to the long axis) above the foresail. Since I was writing about a Cornish lugger at the time, I was more interested in the Lynx because of some superficial similarities.

 

Scarcely half a century of technology lies between the two ships, but they are vastly different. The Lynx was modeled on a schooner of the same name that raided British ships in the War of 1812. She’s longer, sleeker, lacking the barrel shape (tumble home) of older ships, and she was built for speed and maneuverability rather than running cargo. Unlike the exactly vertical masts of the Lady, the Lynx’s masts are canted, giving her a racier look. It was a

Clothing detail

gorgeous day on the Columbia River for a sunset sail, or so I thought. The problem with a beautiful day, though, is a lack of wind. If we hadn’t had a motor, we would have been stuck at the dock, or even carried downstream with the current. I began to have a much better perspective on the vagaries of travel in the days of sail.

 

Both the Lynx and the Lady Washington are teaching vessels, with mostly volunteer crews. Some sail for 10 days or more, some for up to a few months, but there’s always a waiting list so no one can stay very long. I wasn’t surprised to see women on the crew, but there were older men and women too, clearly living a dream. Above, there is a photo of Meghan. The crew and captain dress the part (photo to the right), even to occasional hand stitching of garments.

 

All very believable — if you don’t look at the rubber boots and thong sandals. Their counterparts would most likely have been barefoot. Hardly comfortable, but it wasn’t a comfortable life. And believe me, you wouldn’t want to go overboard with boots on.

 

Hauling

 

This three-hour cruise was to be a “battle sail” with the Lady Washington. Even passengers were called upon to assist. This could be hard work, but with so many people hauling line, it wasn’t. You’ll notice I did my part by taking pictures. Oh, okay, I gave it a try. My fantasies really don’t lean

Splice

 toward hoisting sails, though. You’ll notice lines and rigging are everywhere. Yet the Lynx’s rigging is more advanced and efficient than the Lady Washington’s, which includes more than two miles of line.

 

The Lady Washington passed us on the river, heading upstream, but she, too, had slack sails and was sailing under power. She sailed far ahead of us while we were busy learning from the ship’s mate about gear and a sailor’s tasks. In this photo, the ship’s mate is demonstrating how to splice two lines together.

 

Preparing stun sail	Stun sail raised

 

With just a bit of breeze aloft, the captain decided to do something very unusual, and he called for the stun sail. I’d never heard of one and was fascinated to see this auxiliary sail be raised up to fasten onto the mainsail yardarm, then hoisted alongside the topsail. It’s hard to see in the photo, but it’s that extra flap of sail off to the left. It is possible to raise stun sails on either side of a topsail to catch a little more wind, but as you can see, the sails in this photo are all but flat. The beautiful day could hardly be a worse day in sailing terms.

Columbia Queen

 

As the Lady Washington was making her way back down the river, she was passed by a three-deck, stern-wheeler, the Columbia Queen, just as she reached Beacon Rock. Just for comparison: The Lady Washington’s mast height is 90 feet. Seems large, but the Columbia Queen dwarfs her in all respects.

 

Before she caught up to us again, our bos’n (boatswain) gave us an education on the carronade and the six-pound ball it shoots. The carronade was an innovative cannon in its day, with more adjustable carriage and elevation. Although shorter in range, its slower shot was more accurate and had a bad habit of splintering wood, which could be deadly to sailors. We didn’t shoot cannonballs, of course, just made lots of noise and smoke. We would’ve won the battle, by the way.

 

Bos’n with six-pound ball	Bos’n with carronade

 

Sadly, the sun was setting, and we returned to port. But you don’t get to see my last photo until the end of this article, because I always save the best for last. Instead, I’ll show you the captain with the Columbia River and Mount Hood, the snow-covered peak on the right, behind him.

Captain, Mt. Hood in background

 

Last year, I set sail on the Hawaiian Chieftain. Although she doesn’t have quite the authentic look of the Lady Washington and the Lynx, she’s not a replica. She’s the real thing. This steel-hulled ketch was built in the Hawaiian Islands to serve as a packet boat between islands. She’s not as sophisticated as other ships of her age such as clippers, but she did what she was meant to do. Now she sails out of Grays Harbor, Washington, her mission like that of the Lady Washington and Lynx.

 

Tars aloft	Evil Ryan	Mike

 

This was no beautiful day. The rain was cold and driving, the wind stiff, and therefore a great sailing day. As we approached the dock, the crews of the Hawaiian Chieftain and the Lady Washington were preparing sails for the upstream journey Imagine my surprise to see I was sailing under Captain "Evil Ryan" Meyers again. And I discovered he didn’t get that name by reading comic books. You should see this schemer in battle. As before, the crews dress the part. This is Mike, the very image of the French pirate hero in Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek.

 

Full sail	Chasing Lady W

 

We hauled the sheets (lines that raise sails) and caught the wind under full sail, making about nine knots upstream on the Columbia River. I had been used to the ponderous movement of the Lady and thought the Lynx was fast.  But the Chieftain has a foremast (that’s the forward one) full of square-rigged sails for speed. They can catch much more wind. She also has fore-and-aft-rigged sails everywhere one could be put, which make the vessel so maneuverable a sports car couldn’t turn sharper. With a bit of wind, an able captain and crew, she totally out-classed the Lady Washington in the battle.

 

Firing on Lady W	Lady preparing to fire

 

Ms. Gunner (yes, a woman, and she was good at it) timed her shots very well. From the deck, it was surprisingly easy to tell whether the shot would have hit because the boom echoes off the target ship. She would have missed only once. In this photo, she fired a raking shot, from stern to bow, that likely would have

Crew

 taken out a mast or seriously damaged sails. Look at the smoke the black powder generates, and it’s easy to realize that in a full sea battle it would be hard even to see the opponent. But the Lady prepares to fire back, so all is not well. You should have seen the photo I missed. I saw the gunport open and the fire in the barrel. And I was directly in line of that shot. A very creepy feeling! At another point in the confrontation, the Lady Washington’s bowsprit came within about two feet of our sails, and only the quick thinking of our captain and the Chieftain’s great maneuverability saved us from a potentially damaging collision. And no, this was not planned. It’s not all that easy to stop on the water.

Lady W coming into port at sunset

Not surprisingly, the Hawaiian Chieftain won the battle, for the Lady Washington was a ship already behind the times by the time Chieftain was built, and too much had changed. We were all

cold and completely soaked by the time we pulled into port. The crew lined up for a last photo after a full day’s work. But if they’d said, “Let’s go back out,” I would have been right there with them. In October, I’ll be back in England, and Admiral Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory is on my agenda. And someday I’m going on a 10-day voyage on one tall ship or another. It’s right

up there on my agenda with making

that big sale to a big publisher.

 

Oh, I promised you the best photo of all my hundreds of tall ships, and here it is — The Lady Washington coming into port at sunset, taken from the stern of the Lynx. It’s now my favorite laptop wallpaper.